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How to pitch your indie game

Tiny Library: Modern Fantasy, hidden movement, pitching your game, and Blood Rage

Aug 2, 2023

TL;DR Summary

🚇 Tiny Library: Modern Fantasy preview
🗺️ Hidden movement in tabletop games
📣 How to pitch your indie game
🎲 Recently played: Blood Rage

🚇 Tiny Library: Modern Fantasy preview page

Chthonic Metro Gods is a set of MOSAIC Strict cards

I’m happy to announce that Exeunt Press’ Chthonic Metro Gods has been picked for Tiny Library: Modern Fantasy by Long Tail Games!

Tiny Library: Modern Fantasy is a deck of 50 single-card RPG fragments from dozens of different creators. They are all MOSAIC Strict, meaning they can be easily incorporated into almost any TTRPG system.

Check out the campaign preview on Gamefound: Tiny Library: Modern Fantasy

If you follow the campaign using the link above, you’ll receive a discount when you back it.

And watch the trailer. It’s cool.

🗺️ Hidden movement

I was thrilled to see the reaction to the Hunter vs. Hunted post at Skeleton Code Machine two weeks ago. I had just played Beast (Midhall, et al., 2023) for the first time, and was excited to share my thoughts about it.

Hidden movement is a tricky mechanism to implement well. Just a few of the complications can include:

Risk of hidden player mistakes
Ensuring traceable paths
Leaving tracks behind
Deciding how often to reveal locations

And yet it seems to have inspired quite a few people! I’m really looking forward to seeing how they mix hidden movement into TTRPGs!

You can read the full Hunter vs. Hunted post at Skeleton Code Machine.

📣 How to pitch your indie game

I’m always interested in how to market indie games without a massive budget. Part of marketing usually involves a pitch: a concise and persuasive summary of your game’s concept and features.

I recently watched 30 Things I Hate About Your Game Pitch presented at GDC by Brian Upton. While its specific focus is pitching video games to publishers, I think there are some learnings that can be applied to almost any game pitch.

Here are some key points that I wrote in my notebook:

Skip the backstory: People probably don’t want to digest 20 minutes of lore to be able to get into your game. Brian’s rule of thumb was to keep it as short as the Star Wars opening crawl. Seems like a good rule.
Skip mundane systems and mechanisms: If your game has a system (e.g. inventory system) that isn’t particularly special, no need to highlight it. Focus on the mechanisms that make your game unique.
Emphasize the hook: The hook is what gets people to pick up your game versus a different one. It’s what makes your game unusual, unique, and intriguing. I think condensing this into a single sentence is one of the biggest challenges.
Explain what the player does: You can have a cool fantasy world and interesting mechanisms, but players need to know what they will actually be doing. I can see how, as a designer, it could be easy to miss this one.
Use a few amazing pieces of art: Just one or two custom pieces to really highlight your game might be better than many lower quality pieces. This, of course, depends on your budget and using public domain art might help.
Know who you are pitching to: Knowing your audience is solid advice regardless of the type of writing, but it’s particularly important here. You might need different pitches for customers vs. a publisher vs. your FLGS.
Don’t just chase the latest trend: The example in the GDC talk was the flurry of Gone Home clones following its release in 2016. I think this also touches on the idea of not pitching your game solely in terms of other games.
Explain who you are: Don’t assume they are familiar with your previous games or other work. In a way, you might need a pitch for yourself as much as for the game.
Keep it positive: Don’t pitch your game solely in opposition to another game. Instead of focusing on why something else is bad, consider focusing on why your game is good.
Show a track record of success: Perhaps related to “explain who you are” above, if you’ve had some previous success, be sure to share it. Consider including metrics if they are available.

Note that the numbering above is mine, and doesn’t match the original presentation.

If you want more related tips, consider watching the How to Press Kit video from the ZiMo 22 Workshop Series.

🎲 Recently played: Blood Rage

“When this monster invades a province, destroy all enemy warriors in it.”

Played some more Blood Rage (Lang, 2015), and it continues to be one of my favorites. The closed drafting gets better as players start to learn the cards, and every game seems to include at least one major battle in Yggdrasil.

The best part is how accessible it is to newer players. I’ve yet to have a group struggle to learn it.

Now if only I could finish painting the rest of the monster minis. 😉

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- E.P. 💀